Construction partners turn to making pizza

IDAHO FALLS - One day, the three partners were hanging Sheetrock. The next, they were slinging pizzas all around eastern Idaho.

Unrealistic as it seems, that time frame isn't an exaggeration. Even after Tim Wright and twin brothers Brian and Geoff Padigimus opened Lucy's New York Style Pizzeria in Roberts, they continued to do drywall jobs on the side.

But the bottom line was that drywall just wasn't paying the bills. That's why Wright and the Padigimus brothers opened Lucy's in the first place.

"We just thought that Roberts needed some kind of takeout delivery service in that area because there was none," Wright said. "The whole community really appreciated what we had done, and it's still a thriving business out there."

And so, as Lucy's business grew and drywall jobs stayed scarce, the three Lucy's owners stopped hanging Sheetrock altogether.

They weren't the first workers to turn their backs on the construction industry as the nation's housing market took a turn for the worse. They won't be the last.

Eric Langley of Eastern Idaho Technical College said the number of construction workers seeking advice for a career transition spiked in spring 2010. Workers accustomed to being laid off in the winter months couldn't find work even when the weather warmed up. In the year that's passed since then, the numbers of displaced workers looking for new opportunities hasn't decreased much, he said.

"I don't really see it falling off, to be honest with you," he said.

The situation could be worse. Langley said construction workers are already practiced in what he calls "transferrable skills" - basically, skills that are needed to do other types of jobs. These include the ability to work alone and with their hands, in addition to their experience in abstract reasoning, Langley said.

A common path for displaced construction workers in eastern Idaho is to transition into jobs in energy and related industries, Langley said. Whether that means becoming a radiological control technician, a power-plant operator or a lineman working with improved grids, he said, the point is to develop new skills that are marketable and will be for decades into the future.

"What I'm hoping for is that a lot of these guys are going to be able to get retrained," Langley said. "And then they're going to be able to take those skills down the road with them."

Six months after the Roberts store opened in May 2009, Wright and the Padigimus brothers expanded. They opened their Idaho Falls store in November 2009, Wright said. It became immediately apparent that their success in Roberts wouldn't be isolated.

"When people heard we were coming to Idaho Falls, they were waiting for us," he said.

Wright, 26, said the Lucy's owners are now looking to open more stores in Idaho Falls and around eastern Idaho. He said his experience running a drywall business, even though it didn't turn out like he'd hoped, helped him reach the success he's now enjoying.

"My partners and I, we talk about that a lot -- how glad we were to have that first company to get us ready for this one," Wright said. "I could never go back to working for someone now that I've had that experience."